Praying for "the best outcomes"

I can't articulate the magnitude so I won't even try.

Tomorrow morning I have a 2 hour exam which if I pass will be a positive step in direction of my dreams - namely to learn shorthand (in the short-term) and get a payrise.(in the long-term)

Tomorrow afternoon I am viewing a flat. This is huge, this is so big, this is enormous.
The flat is great for my son, but not for me, on account of Zat bike and there being no space for it. It's a form of transport I need. Would you get rid of your much loved car because the home you've had a choiceless choice to move into meant you had to? Anyway, I'm saying YES and feel really fucking sick. I don't want to lose the bike. Argos have a 65% clearance sale going on though so timing couldn't be more perfect if we got it. Starting from scratch here...neither of us have beds and that's just the start...

I need to share some coincidences...I'll be quick, I don't like long posts particularly unless they are well written and well, love Stigmum as I do, I am her conduit and a hopeless judge.

The flat I'm viewing tomorrow is in the same block, or next door to the block where I said 'no' to a flat 6 years ago. (The first person had accepted it so I didn't see why I had to...)

I got a call on Tuesday, after posting (!) to go and view a flat I bid on in.... Papier Mache Towers! Yes, the place my son and I wrote this entire blog from when we were being evicted. "Aren't there plans to knock it down?" I said to the woman on the phone. "I don't know about that," she said. "I'm only given names to call. Do you want to view it?"

Yesterday I bet myself that on the bidding boards today, there would be a garden flat. There would be my 'ideal home'.
Bingo! There it was. Ground and basement floors with a garden. Steps so not for wheelchairs. And where is it? Why, the very street my son first lived on. A few doors down from where we both lived with the Foca. The very first place we were booted out from. Well, given no choice but to leave.

It made me think about Posh Street, where we were evicted from afterwards, narrowly avoiding a hostel only to land in Papier Mache Towers. I'd stand in the Posh Street's park in those dark days and implore the sky: "Please, one day, bring me back to Rochester!" like a Bronte heroine, only not half as cool.

Imagine...(I breathe, it is, all, if not too much, alot)

Anything could happen. Who knows what can happen? Not me (I've been reading posts that I saw others had read from Stiggers stats - long story ey stigs, a long long story but them readers picked some good ones for me to read back on. Your best is sometimes hard to find)

I'm praying I pass that exam tomorrow morning.
With the housing, I'm praying, I'm praying hard for the best outcome.
Whatever happens, I'm saying YES.
With that I relinquish control and hope the best, whatever that may be, comes to me and my boy.
My son, my sun, my boy, my buoy.

He asked to sleep in my bed tonight - "So you can hear me breathing if you can't sleep. I remember you said that used to help you when we shared a room"

How many times can you win in life?

I won with him; my son my sun my buoy, my boy.

I win for him now.

best outcomes best outcome best outcomes

At the Coal Face

At the Coal Face - written the day before a viewing in November, my first viewing in five years. I was Number 12 for a housing association flat. I was struggling so took myself off to a vietnamese woman for a pedicure

At the Coal Face - viewing a property

It's all so tight
in the throat
particularly
Easier to breathe
through the nose
breathe
release the chains bound tightly
across the chest
Leave to God
Trust to God
He has a master plan
You can say Yes and something better will come
Enjoy the pedicure
There is space for you
to make space
within

Invitation to view a property

The council called me yesterday at 8.50 am to ask if I'd been contacted in regards to viewing a flat. The viewing was meant to be that afternoon but it seemed no-one had been told. I wasn't surprised to get an invitation. I don't know why. Possibly because I like this flat we're in. This flat we can't stay in.

She called again at 10am where my son rather unhelpfully told her I was 'sleeping in bed', which I wasn't. We were both being lazy and playing and tickling and being generally silly... 'sleeping in bed...' tsk..

Friday. I view it Friday. A two bedroom flat. Third floor. One double room, one single. Blow heating. (Blow heating? Is that similar to totally ineffectual storage heating?) Shared garden.

I'm Number 2.

I should be excited but I'm not, I'm terrified.

It's much further, much much further to a main road, public transport and shops BUT I can relax about my son's education and my job, that those aren't disrupted.

Zat. Zat bike. What will happen to you Zat? I still need you to get to work. Where will you live?

"It's a big decision," said the woman from the council.

I have to say there and then if I want it or not.

I can't say no can I? They say you can but read me and my experience and you know I can't.

The choices we are forced to make are not the choices we would love to make. Everywhere I've bid on recently, or risk being taken off the lists, have been on estates I wouldn't 'choose' to raise my child.

My son caught me crying yesterday afternoon. "Don't worry mummy, we'll move in, play the lottery, win and then buy something brilliant."

Perspectives huh.

I thank the world for my son everyday. I ask the world to protect my son everyday.

I'm Number 2. Number 1 could always say "Yes"

The Government is bad for our health

If I have made myself ill it is because the Government has made me ill.
I have tried not to allow it to get to me but it depresses me; makes me angry, gets me pissed off. I can only articulate it on here, it silences me in reality, renders me mute. "I don't like it when you're in your daydream head mummy," says my son. I may go to the Women's Centre and start articulating it there. I told them I'd pop by, when I met them at the lobby.

If I have made myself ill it is because of recurring evictions and a State that can but won't stop this cycle; won't regulate rents or build affordable homes. It's disgusting, disgusting what's going on. Private landlords aren't dropping rents and housing associations are increasing theirs. I know all this because the perk, if you like, of being in a need of housing situation, is that you have access to what social and council properties are available and for how much they are going for.

All this makes me ill.

A government who forces me out to work during a recession, when I have a job already. I'm a childminder, though paid less. Oh, doesn't my child count?

Is motherhood not valued anymore?
Is it a 'non job'?

Is that why lone parents aren't given social housing anymore, because they don't "work"?

This government has put me on ESA, with its damning policies and legislations.

Everytime I get better I get knocked down.

A nation of knocked down people.

I'm no different to a criminal forced to do community service - voluntary work by another name - internships - we won't pay you - and we'll take away the childcare so you have nowhere to outsource your primary occupation - ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaa.

I love writing this shit.
I could keep writing it, keep writing it if it makes ONE PERSON THINK

I've got to stop thinking though. That's what's got me into my mess, well, according to Louise Hay, according to me.

Angry, pissed off, hurting, hurting hurting hurting

A nation of angry, pissed off, hurting people.

A generation of children living with angry, pissed off, hurting people, bounced from one home to another, overcrowded, cold, in debt.

I wanted to give you a happy ending. Oh! I can't!

"By the time people wake up, the damage will have been done," the Ed said to me.

Yeah...

Read all about it! Read all about it!!

I have to rest now, think of my son.

My son, my sun, my son

I'm blessed, that's the problem isn't it Prime Minister?

Blogging in Two Directions

Instinctively I know that my writing will go in two directions before the end of week when Stiggers and I will take a break.

One is SEX (Oh stigs, love, love baby, let's stay and talk about that, explore that...we've never done that, not really, not positively, hopefully, beautifully, naturally, our confidence only just beginning, so fragile..)
The other is THE USUAL CRAP
I have to mention THE USUAL CRAP because if I am going to blame myself for what I am going through, I believe the cause is not SEX but THE USUAL CRAP.

THE USUAL CRAP is making us all ill and who can change things?
The Government
Who won't change things?
The Government
Who must therefore change things?
US

I will have to go and put Stiggers' words into action. All her words, be they SEX or THE USUAL CRAP, and do something positive with her/my knowledge.

Now I must go away and figure how to post it. Which should I focus on first? Oh dilemmas...they are the making of one's life, no?

Thank you for listening and have a good day.

Abuses on the Lobby front line...Cheers Dave

The Prime Minister has done a very good job, hasn't he, of pitting the people of this country against one another.

"Divide and Rule!! Divide and Rule!!

There were about a dozen of us who turned up to lobby against the Governnment's Welfare Reform Bill yesterday. Not many, but the Single Mother's Self Defence group and the Global Women's Strike Group and Winvisible, had big banners, and anyway, we were there, standing up for the rights of millions of people.

A man drives past in a van that says "Thrifty" on it. My first assumption is that he's a worker and probably doesn't earn much, then before I can think anything else, he's given us a one fingered salute.

I was so shocked, I walked forward with my own one fingered salute and shouted "Fuck you too!" That's not like me, to be honest, and this morning my anger became clear.

Yes, we were only 12, but one woman in a wheelchair, one woman with a baby in a pram, one young black girl, one young white girl who was also there on Monday and might be one of the organisers, one married mother with a daughter my son's age, one male pensioner, one priest. A pretty wholesome demographic of people. How dare Mr Thrifty stick his finger up at them when they are standing there for his benefit too.

"7 out of 8 housing benefit claimants are in work" shouts one banner.

Anyway, not long after Mr Thrifty's gone, two wealthy looking gentleman walk by and one, the older, balding one, comes up to me and says, in his cut glass accent with venom in it's delivery:

"You should all get a job!"

"Do you have a job?" I ask politely.

"Yes, I've worked all my life. Many years ago I went to Canada when it was freezing cold..."

"Well I'm glad you haven't been made redundant," I interrupt him.

"Wwwwhat?"

"I said I'm glad you haven't been made redundant and are competiting with hundreds of other people for one job."

Bluster bluster then: "I met an Indian lady with two children living in Hampstead! Hampstead! It's disgraceful, these people living in places...."

"Well if there was more social housing, perhaps it wouldn't be such a big problem now would it?" I feel the anger bubbling beneath my surface.

"Where are the father's? Where are the fathers? I have lots of children and I look after them all, where are they!"

After quoting Michael Gove saying pregnancy is a male problem, "a male problem, a MALE PROBLEM Mr Gove the Tory said," I said:

"And how many times have you been unfaithful to your wife?"

He stepped back and smirked, shocked then gaffawed, and I was about to sneer "hypocrite" when the pensioner intervened, saying money shouldn't be taken from the needy but taken away from fuelling wars such as in Afghanistan... and they were off..shouting, I couldn't kkep up...The Jews, more protestants that catholics leaving Ireland back during the potato famine... I could'n't keep up, I don't know enough.

The row was broken up and the odious blue-eyed baldy smiled at me skulking off to rejoin his friend who, as I eyeballed the Fascist, didn't look quite so odious, had not come up to us and joined in, kept his distance and so well he might, if he too had nothing good to say)

Some members of the group came up to me afterwards and asked me if I was alright, which was really kind, because you don't really expect that, when the level of abuse you've just received, is what you receive all the time if you read right wing papers. So nothing out of the ordinary really; I shouldn't have been so shocked myself.

I know I shouldn't be at the lobby. I know that I am the Great British Problem. I know that I am universally hated by greater numbers of British society today than ever before (Thanks Dave).

I'm a single mother. I'm 'unemployed' I 'live in a flat hardworking people can't afford' and what none of my fellow lobbyists know, am in reciept of a sickness benefit, so 'disabled' (I do not see myself as disabled but depression is a disease and it's no higher payment than income support, where I could hide my 'disease')

Perhaps for all these reasons it's my duty to be there, so I can stand on behalf of all the men, women and children who cannot be there.

Hit me baby ONE MORE TIME?
I will defend myself
I will defend you

Our first duty is to ourselves.
Without ourselves what hope for our children?

Fisherwoman's Friends

It was too much, too much yesterday, thinking about welfare reforms, my life, where I am. I needed something, something...a drink...Janis Joplin...so I got beer from the fridge and turned the music up really loud then went to get my son at Kung Fu.
Saw The Estimator, who was picking up his son, and told him I'd been having a little party at my house, celebrating my life and he said, laughing, be careful, he could smell it on my breath and offered me a Fisherman's Friend.

Later, I cracked open more beers..the supermarket's got some well cheap deals on at the moment! Oh they know how we're feeling!

Then I went off and got drunk, on Facebook of all places, but as it happened, the best place to be. My friend Jo was there, "swigging" the same as me, so we "clinked" our bottles! Kelly was there, saying she watches Celebrity Big Brother too and lots of my friends, like me, liked Janis
So here you are, as I prepare to go lobbying again this afternoon...

Freedom's just another word...

Rent and Universal Credit capped at £26000

There are Tory spies out there, I know. That whole cabinet is going to say thanks Stigmum, now we know how to hurt you and hurt all those other families! Woo hooooooo!

Remember, before I give these figures, how hard I have fought for a council flat, how often I have bidded for some box on some estate you wouldn't choose if you were rich and been unsuccessful.

Subject: The £26,000 cap
Who: Two single mothers
Rent example: One in Private versus one in Council housing

Me:
Rent £350 per week =18,200 a year
£26000
- 18200
= 7800 a year to live on

My friend
Rent £140 per week = £7280 a year
£26000
-7280
=£18720

I worked out that I currently get £7449, excluding council tax
Doubt my friend gets £18700 with her three kids.

You might think £7749 is a lot
All this Tory shouting it's not fair people live in places you hard working people can't afford! Me and my friend live really close to one another, that's how we're friends.

Shockingly, including my rent and council tax, I get £13 more than the proposed £500 weekly cap. Yearly therefore I looked like I'm better off but weekly I'm worse off by £13. Above the proposed cap with £26689. I shall go back to the draw board with this

What's newly frightened me of course, is if I get a job that pays £35,000 a year which means I go home with £26000 after tax (what I read Dave tell Asda) is I only have £7800 to feed (at school too) and clothe and heat and I don't get to see my child at all because I've had to pay someone else to look after him. Who's going to pay me that anyway?

My friend on the other hand, on the same salary, might be able to afford a holiday, in a tent, in Devon (or somewhere). Then again, maybe not, price of rail travel these days.

WE NEED MORE EMPHASIS ON SOCIAL HOUSING
WE NEED MORE EMPHASIS ON AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Not on displacing children
Not removing them from good schools
Not watching their parents so stressed and frightened about an unclear future.

It's not 'workless' parents that ruin their future (if you read the Mail or any other right wing commentator), it's a government that fails to understand the meaning of secure affordable housing because they take their own for granted.

Welfare Reform has been proven to save very little money, an article yesterday in the Guardian saying "The £275m savings as a proportion of the £192bn spent on welfare payments in 2010 is tiny." (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jan/23/duncan-smith-benefit-cap-poverty?intcmp=239) but this ideologically driven government does not care.

Do you care Tory spy?

I'm off to be sick.

Wrecking amendments - children's lives first

I managed to get out and lobby yesterday with the Single Mother's Self Defence crew outside Parliament. There I spoke to the priest I've met a few times, a fierce campaigner of people in debt, and a Lord.

The Lord came out to tell us that they were going vote on two issues

1)Homeless households be exempt from the cuts
2) Child benefit be excluded from the caps.

The Lords were defeated on the former (so fabulous news for my child) but the Government are up in arms at being defeated on the second (truly fabulous news for all children)

To be honest,I feel SO SICK. The cap takes no account of rent, never mind living costs as a parent. You read the papers (don't don't!) and Tory ministers, like Dave, going to Asda and asking workers "Is it fair that people earn benefits of £26,000? (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2090750/Welfare-reform-Labour-bishops-Lib-Dem-peers-derail-benefits-cap-plan.html)

They like to chuck around numbers to get ordinary people really riled up.

Lord Freud, the welfare reform minister, said the Labour amendments were a 'wrecking amendment.' Wrecking their wrecking plans you mean. According to Inside Housing he said:

"It is very easy to see that any local authorities could consider people threatened with homelessness or priority need as any household with children.

‘In practical terms this is the same as not having a cap at all." (http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/tenancies/defeat-for-government-on-welfare-reform-bill/6520086.article)

Laid bare for you...The caps are directed at CHILDREN. The caps are directed at families with CHILDREN. Tory wrecking amendments to children's lives as if their lives aren't already hard enough.

My child, evicted again, risks to his education flare up again and for what? Security? No! No, it's for nothing because his mother can't handle it either.

And I really wish they'd stop banging on about "a culture of worklessness" during a fucking recession where thousands are losing their jobs and hundreds are in competition with one another for one position.

This was not what I was going to write about this morning.

I will go out and lobby again tomorrow. I don't care if I'm nervous, I don't care if I'm shy. It's the Year of the Dragon and that must mean something. Roar...

In which direction do I go?

Blogging is reflecting my life.

I want to concentrate on healing myself but then go off and read stuff about housing and feel myself get so angry (Clegg saying this weekend he supports the benefits cap.. I take it personally, he met me, he took my details, he said he would help but I can't see how kicking me and other parents, disabled, elderly, in the teeth is helping
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16671210)

I want to concentrate on healing myself and blog about that. Thousands of other people feel like shit about all kinds of thing, maybe something I might say might make them feel better. Oh I don't know...

I'm obsessed with housing though. I can't help reading about it now there's so much coverage in the press with all these reform bills going through. As you know though, I find it depressing. It hurts. I feel I'm being attacked and I am, benefit recipients are being hit really hard, those in work and those not.

On Sunday, yesterday, I woke up so, so...I don't know, stuck.

I've got angel cards on my bedside table so picked them up and shuffled them. "What can I do? What can I do?

The card I picked was Angel Gabriel, telling me he was with me and to follow the signs.

Signs? What signs?

I continue to blog by instinct then?
I give blogging a rest?
I blog about love?
I blog about housing?
I blog about benefits as a form of defence for others on benefits?
I blog about positive things ONLY
but then where do I put the outside things that drag me down?

At the time the sign was to get out of bed, and given how I feel, that's a mighty good start.
For anyone, not just me.

Unable to lobby when lobbying's needed

I missed it yesterday; the single mothers self defence corp lobbying parliament against welfare reforms
I'm missing it tonight; Defend council housing against the 8% rise in tenants' rents.
I am a single mother
I am not a tenant
I am against rent rises everywhere
and against pay freezes

I am not a tenant.

Between you and me, existing tenants enjoy really good affordable rents. I don't think they know, or maybe they do of course, it's why they're lobbying.

What I mean therefore, is, for example, two bed properties that I bid on are around £120 a week. The cheapest are around £118, not much lower.

Existing tenants, their rent might be £84 a week for the same thing. I know!! Fabulous isn't it?!

I'm not not going to the lobby because I'm not a tenant.

In many ways I'm grateful there are more people to shout out against expensive rents. I'm hoarse after begging and begging for 8 years for affordable rents. Only you, reader, hear me, I could hug my followers for not switching off.

I'm not going to the lobby because

well, the fight's not in me at the moment

all I can do is eat
eat
eat
eat
crisps and chocolate mostly

Iceland are doing good deals on them at the moment

My son didn't even know I'd bought a six pack of cheese and onion crisps for £1 because I'd eaten them all before he got home!

The exclamation mark is because I've realised that's quite an achievement!

Actually that doesn't need an exclamation mark
Achievement would be making it to a lobby
Thank you all of those who go.

The new "affordable" social housing

I figured while I'm already down, I may as well go into to bid for properties, seeing as I usually can't do it as it drops my mood into a big black hole.

I bid on three out of ten (Lucky bids on all of them and with her 900 + points has turned down all the properties she's been shortlisted for apart from the garden properties where she's been number 2 or 3 on the list so has missed out. I tend to bid for what I don't want to turn down, though in truth, I wouldn't want to live on any of the estates I bid on today. Still, my post isn't about that, so onward...)

I had a glimpse at one bed properties (because I've been advised to bid on one of those...oh don't make me angrier...) and well, I was quite surprised:

1 bedroom affordable rent flat on a small estate. Comprising one good size double bedroom, living room with period feature windows, fully fitted kitchen and bathroom with white suite. 4th floor. No lift. Full central heating. The estate is only a few minutes walk from Russell Square tube station and numerous buses. The successful candidate will benefit from an initial 1 year Introductory AST tenancy and on successful completion of their tenancy conditions, they will be issued with a 5 year fixed term AST tenancy. The rental charge for this property is £226.00 per week which equates to approximately £979.33 per month. Ward: King’s Cross. Approx rent: £226 pw. (Housing Association) "Affordable" ?

Compared to:

1 bedroom flat (single) on an individual block. Open plan living room and kitchen. 1st floor with lift access. The successful candidate will need to demonstrate a strong tie to the Covent Garden area. Sensitive Let. Housing Co-operative. Council Tax Band: D. Ward: Holborn and Covent Garden. Approx rent: £87 pw.

1 bedroom flat (double) in an individual block. 3rd floor with lift access and 1 external step. District heating. Landlord: Camden Council. Council Tax Band: D.
District: Holborn. Ward: Bloomsbury. Approx rent: £126 pw.

or
1 bedroom flat (double) on a large estate. 3rd floor with lift access. Full central heating. Sensitive Let.Landlord: Camden Council. Council Tax Band: B.
District: Holborn. Ward: King’s Cross. Approx rent: £95 pw

Compared to:
2 bedroom flat (1 double 1 single) in an individual block.
4th floor with 36 external steps. Lift access. No adaptations.
No right to acquire. No Pets. Electric storage heating.
Landlord: (Housing Association). Ward: Holborn and Covent Garden. Approx rent: £145 pw.

or what I bid on

2 bedroom flat (doubles) on a small estate. 3rd floor with lift access. District heating. Landlord: Camden Council. Council Tax Band: B. District: Kentish Town. Ward: Kentish Town.
Approx rent: £121 pw.

Watch all rents and all tenancies shoot up to that first one I listed, which touts itself as 'affordable' at £226 per week.

That word "affordable"...I think it's being written out of the dictionary, same with the word "secure"

The fight's not over. I hope I'm wrong.

(and a quick maths test for you... on two I bid for I'm 60th out of 230 and on the third 64th out of 221...work it out!)

Consultations nobody knows anything about

I'm wondering if the 22,000 people on Camden's housing waiting list, or the 5 million people on waiting lists around the UK, know the housing minister has issued a consultation on the allocation of social housing and wants their input?

I found out because I follow the minister on twitter...the people I know who are affected by new housing laws/are in council flats/temporary accommodation do not follow the minister (not that he tweets and retweets and retweets this consultation process, no not at all)

I ask because apparently we're consulted on lots of things but I can't recall being consulted on anything that might matter, like the destruction of the NHS or the implementation of a high speed rail network which sees my place on the waiting list slip ever lower as existing council tenants have their homes bulldozed and have to be found alternative like for like accommodation.

I am also now suitably cynical having marched against a war that went ahead to know that it doesn't matter whether we're consulted or not, the government will go ahead with what it wants to go ahead with even if the Lords step in and defeat their amendments.

At my volunteering yesterday, a person there who works within housing at the council did not know there's a national consultation going on.

This consultation is for us:
This consultation, says the minister, is aimed primarily at local authorities. Housing associations, social housing tenants, and waiting list applicants, as well as voluntary and community organisations representing tenants and applicants are also expected to have an interest

Next week (oh really stiggers? really?? can't we just get it over with now?) I'll see how new policies hurt me and my son. From what I've read already, the minister likes to hurt me and my son. What hurts us hurts millions and I can best demonstrate how I feel about it if I write about how I feel about it because I wouldn't be surprised if others felt the same way as me.

Here it is for you. It's 70 pages long but you can skim it:

http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/housing/allocationofaccommodation

(Oh Stigs, why can't we put links up anymore that highlight and lead people straight there?)

Too depressed to write today

It's too much. Too much too much too much

I shouldn't read, even good articles like George Monbiot's Making Democracy Safe for Business:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/09/bankers-protesters-squatters-cameron

or one's delivering avoidable news like this one:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2012/01/10/child-poverty-gap-widening-between-tory-areas-and-the-inner-cities-115875-23692250/

or the articulation that the attack is on all sides and only the Lords can save us: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jan/10/welfare-reform-lords-blows-poor-disabled?CMP=twt_gu

Then tomorrow Single Mother's Self Defence are protesting the welfare reform bill outside parliament. I want to go. I so want to go:

Women are coming to us very distressed about the Welfare Reform Bill and how it will affect them. They are terrified by total insecurity -- from the cuts to housing benefit and the benefit cap, to impossible jobseeking, work and childcare conditions, under the threat of sanctions applied to unwaged and low earner alike. They fear their benefits will be cut off and they and their families will be forced into unbearably overcrowded homes, or they will be made homeless, destitute and even end up on the street.

Women, who have the first responsibility for families and are often keeping an eye on elderly neighbours and other vulnerable people in our communities, are already exhausted and overworked. They feel desperate. Living costs are soaring and they can’t afford to put the heating on. Food banks have become a reality for many women who have recently lost their jobs. Vital local services are disappearing – afterschool clubs, homecare, day centres – at the same time as they will be forced away from loved ones by compulsory back-to-work schemes, and the housing benefit and overall benefit caps. The Bill will have life-threatening consequences, many more than hit the headlines.

I wanted to go, be with people like me, feel some strength through empathy and understanding.

I can't go though.

I have an appointment with Mind.

It was made for me, to help me fill in job application forms, I didn't make it myself.

I've a mind not to go. I'm sure they help lots of people, infact they do.

Pressure.

I want to curl up and pretend I'm a billionaire and that all human's have bad days and hey, look on the bright side, Cameron's going to scrap my 50p tax rate and make me richer.

Maybe I should blog about other things

Maybe I shouldn't blog at all

Desire

There is a flame that burns within me after all

Don't tell me what I can and cannot do.

What I should and should not do.

Leave me alone

Shapps says housing allocation unfair, but for wrong reasons

For once it seems me and the housing minister agree when he says that the housing allocation system is unfair but this little report, as I glance with mine eyes, is flawed beyond belief and kicks me into an early grave...

Flexible tenancies for all which you know I'm against

"a new 'Affordable Rent' tenancy will be offered by housing associations to some new tenants of social housing from April 2011. Affordable Rent properties will offer fixed term tenancies at a rent higher than social rent - with landlords able to set rents at up to 80 per cent of local market rents. How can affordable rent be higher rent? Ey?? EY??????

As for the likes of statorily homeless like me:

"Currently some homeless families are turning down the decent private rented accommodation they've been offered as a settled home, and demanding to be provided with expensive temporary accommodation, at huge cost to the taxpayer, until a social home becomes available."

Demanding? Where did he get that?

Private renting not expensive? PRIVATE RENTING NOT EXPENSIVE? So why the cap? Why are thousands going to lose their homes? Fortunately statutorily homeless are exempt from this, so that's why they want everyone to go private, so no-one is exempt from punitive legislation and insecure housing.

A two bedroom private flat near me is £450 a week according to local estate agent office which is £100 dearer than me here in temporary.

Here's the bloody awful article which I stupidly read, then wept:

http://www.communities.gov.uk/news/newsroom/ - oops, it's dated 2010 - fuck - after I sent ministers my Diary of an Election Eviction which I'm thinking more and more they used as a template for cuts...

This is the article where he says people play the system. I left a comment on it, because I no longer have words, apart from it's all shit, all shit what spouts out of this coalition.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/housing-network/2012/jan/10/housing-executives-shapps-comments

or the original diatribe of total lack of understanding: http://www.communities.gov.uk/news/housing/2060990

You have to ask yourself if any politician cares

It was a dream I had, to write to the chancellor. "Oh go away nightmare!" I screamed but it wouldn't. The image of the chancellors face floated before me with the words "God forsaking coalition" and the voice saying "write to him". It's hearing the benefit review hadn't gone through yet just after the new year which spurred me to action....


5th January 2012

Dear Right Honourable [Chancellor of the Exchequer],

Tell me, please, is everyone blind to the country’s housing crisis in this God forsaking coalition?
I am writing to you because I am hoping you are not. I am hoping you can communicate a level of understanding of where our country is amongst your peers.
I have enclosed two pieces of writing I had published last month which I am hoping you will find time to read. One is a viewpoint in the Ham & High; the other a letter in the Camden New Journal. My fear is that they are timeless pieces no matter which Party is in power. I hope I am wrong.
Sir, capping benefits, lowering housing allowances, are not the answer to the catastrophe in front of us. Replacing a focus on refurbishing empty properties and building affordable housing is. Not what’s affordable to you and your cabinet but affordable to me and my fellow country men and women.
Rent should be kept out of the Universal Credit equation the coalition is intent on pushing through. It may all sound great in theory but in practice it will only devastate more lives. Crime is already increasing.
I have never written to a chancellor before. I didn’t think a chancellor could do anything but of course they can; of course you can. Do you care for our country and all the people within it?
Mr [Chancellor], our country needs you.
I hold faith that your influence can help heal the problems that have accumulated over decades in the housing sector.
Watch It’s a Wonderful Life Mr [Chancellor]. It is sadly a timeless film where today people actually are hurling themselves over bridges (Archway Bridge near me).
Don’t be a Potter Government Sir. Not now, not anymore.
I look forward to hearing good news and soon. There is time to review the legislation that sees our country suffering no end. Your country is mine but we are not in it together.
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. I hope you can see what I’m saying.
Yours sincerely,
Sue de Nim

I wish I'd written:
P.S: Is parenting a job?
P.P.S: Please don't charge me to access my son's maintenance. We're in enough debt as it is.

Missed opportunities ey but let's hope, let's hope that this cabinet aren't all in it together and that one has a flipping conscience and the brain in his head to bring about positive change for the masses not the few.

How the Duke depressed me on Christmas Eve

Oh how chance, I believed, might favour me in the days before Christmas when I heard a grand old Duke (not of Cambridge, he's a young one)patron of a homeless charity (again not the young one who also is) would be present at a carol service.

Here's the letter I handed to him, which he put in his breast pocket and said he'd read later. Which he did, and responded to straight away, which was great as no-one ever does that. However, he wrote there was nothing he could do, no-one he could influence, but "every success" with my lobbying. Oh the rage, I could only see black. So I wrote a response in my Black Notebook but haven't sent it. Should I? I feel my blood boiling again...

(Oh and Google told me how to address him because in truth, I had no idea)

20 December 2011

To Your Grace, the [Grand Old] Duke of [X],

If I have hand delivered you my article, then my prayers have been answered. If this letter and my article in the Ham & High have been passed to you, my prayers have also been answered because I was very nervous of approaching you at the Church of the Immaculate Conception’s carol service reception.
In short, Your Grace, I am asking you to help me help our country.
What the Government is about to do in regards to housing will destroy the lives or indeed life chances of so many people.
As you many know, the coalition wishes to abolish council housing, end life time tenancies, increase social rent to market share, and amongst other things, re-introduce the Right to Buy which got us into this mess in the first place where there is not now enough affordable housing for ordinary men, women and children.
I have appealed to Government ministers many times, to no avail. Articles I have written in the Ham & High and other papers, have gone unnoticed.
You have connections your Grace. Please, on behalf of everybody I mention in the article, see what you can do in order to halt this catastrophe. Or make those with power understand what they are unleashing.
Thankyou Your Grace. It was a coincidence I was at the carol service at all. My local church is elsewhere but on Sunday came to Farm Street to thank God for everything that I’ve got. The music is so stunning, it’s a beautiful service.
I do hope you can help me. I’ll put my details at the bottom of the page should you wish to contact me.
I wish you and your family a very happy Christmas and all the best in 2012.

Yours faithfully,

Sue de Nim

A dream's reality just beyond reach

How do I write this without getting bogged in detail? My dream of yonder night, where I was pregnant in some kind of execution quad and two Asian people appeared before me.

Saturday..I take my son to Kung Fu. The centre is near Papier Mache Towers where I used to live. I decide that I will go there as my doctor sent a letter there - tell the new occupants of the flat to forward any post that comes in (there is more to this but that's what I mean about getting bogged down)

I pop into the my old Hairdresser first to wish SuperMario a happy new year and settle down with a cup of coffee. I read page 15 of Thursday's Daily Express - ooh the day I wrote to the Chancellor - Somalians claiming £2000 a week in rent. The trotted line of people living in luxury flats hardworking people can't afford. No balance in the article about the need for more social housing.

Pick up my son, go to Papier Mache Towers. New occupants aren't in but the neighbours - the couple who got the flat I bid on and didn't get - are there. Flip, just this little story is too massive actually... I give you bones ok?

She tells me she was two years waiting. "Refuse temporary". I refused temporary too..I didn't get a flat. She, her husband and child viewed SEVEN flats. In the same time frame, I viewed NONE. I wish her and her family well though, and I leave.

LIGHTBULB MOMENT

My dream! In 2010, I mentioned this family in my CNJ article. One of two shortlisted that day. How 500 points after 2 years when my son and I were 350 after 7?

If, if if if if if, they agree to give me the breakdown of their points, a lawyer might take my case for discrimination. Take my case that the system is flawed, unfair.

Oh my heart!

I recall the film documentary maker who bumped into me on Friday morning. I turned down the chance to be in a programme later aired as "Pramface" but he took down my number again anyway.

What if if if if.

Wow. With this couple's help, I can take on the local council and with the documentary maker's input, we turn the story into a national one, which it is, and keep social housing high in the political eye.

I feel sick with desire, feel sick with hope.

I drop my son off at a party. I go back to the Hairdresser, tear out the Daily Express article. Go back to the couple at Papier Mache Towers.

The mother invites me in. I speak slowly to be understood, and she does, she does understand. "Don't be frightened I say, you won't lose your home." "Council no happy," she says. "I will protect you," I answer.

She says her husband is at work, he makes the decisions. "Talk to him," I say. "You don't have to decide now. I will go to the law centre, get advice. You know, I don't plan these things. Three days ago a lawyer's card fell out of a box when I was cleaning and I throw it away! Please help me, please. You will be helping everyone."

Later I got really depressed. Really, Really Down. Don't think that they won't help, don't think that they won't help they won't help they won't help don't think they won't help they will help they will help

I didn't help myself though..well I did..helped myself to Al Cohol but that isn't exactly what sees us through

Is it?

Let faith be your shield

I unearthed this poem yesterday when having a big clearout, that my son's class performed a couple of years ago.

"It's not a poem mummy, it's a song," said my son.

Here it is, I don't know who wrote it, but I like it and so might you.

When a knight won his spurs, in the stories of old,
He was gentle and brave, he was gallant and bold,
With a shield on his arm and a lance in his hand
For God and for valour he rode through the land.

No charger have I, and no sword by my side,
Yet still to adventure and battle I ride,
Though back into storyland giants have fled,
And the knights are no more and the dragons are dead.

Let faith be my shield and let joy be my steed
'Gainst the dragons of anger, the ogres of greed;
And let me set free, with the sword of my youth,
From the castle of darkness the power of the truth.

Back to Housing...2012

I have just written a lovely post about my son back at school. Lovely for me, not for you necessarily.

The Back to School label was going to harbour a post about my son, yes, but also, blogging. Back to blogging

Back to blogging...

Back to housing?

Well I don't know

I asked myself why I had a housing 2011 label last year. I should have given myself a break from it, not thought about That Which Makes Me Want To Kill Myself.

I know why I didn't though; the legislations were still untabled (untabled?) I could still try to stop them going through.

Ha ha ha ha ha

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!

Oh my God, what was I thinking?!!!

That even if I'd put more into it, possibly written more articles, or letters, or tweets to the housing minister no-one would be losing their homes this year, thousands instead would move into secure affordable ones???!

Oh my, I'm so funny!!!! Fantastically deluded!!!!

I do not know why I have set up a Housing 2012 label. I think I had a thought over the holidays that I would have to start thinking about bidding this year and the label MIGHT help me do that. But what more can I tell you about bidding that I already haven't? Jack shit, that's what.

Listen, I'm going to send my It Could Be You article to a couple more politicians. Need to follow those voracious dreams I had over Christmas even if it's pointless (talking of which my points should go up this year...ten years in the borough..ten years....a decade...oh my God, a decade lost, lost to...)

After that, well I Don't Know

See what comes ey

I'm told I'm protected from the housing benefit cuts but I'm not protected from arrears if I get a job (parenting is a job isn't it?), am I? Are you?

"Happy New Fear!" the Estimator said to me in the coffee shop this morning.

Years I've been afraid, years, you know, three of them are recorded.

For an Estimator to say Happy New Fear

well all I can say is

Welcome to my world all you middle classes